


Aberration

by QuestionableLifeChoices



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dammit Asgore, Frisk is awesome but they are also ten, Gen, Human/Monster War, Humans are not a bunch of jerks, Post-Soulless Pacifist Route, Reader Is Not Frisk, Reader is ACE, Reader really needs to lighten up, Reader remembers noncanon time loops, The loops where Frisk did not stay determined, The reader is not handling the resets well, Time loops everywhere, Well this one is a bit murdery, but at least there's a reason for it, reader has a name and is really more of an OC, reader has ptsd, the whole cast - Freeform, time loops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 16,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6653248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuestionableLifeChoices/pseuds/QuestionableLifeChoices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In some loops, Frisk never reached the Surface at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which very little is actually explained

It’s a beautiful day outside. The sun is slanting through the blinds onto your pillow with a brightness that would be annoying if you could drum up that emotion at the moment. You let yourself close your eyes for just a moment, breathing in and gathering strength. Breathe out, that’s all you’re getting. You have promises to keep, to both yourself and to a dead man. You roll out of bed and don’t let yourself lose momentum as you go through the motions of getting ready.  
  
Technically, you have worn the same clothes for nine days running, you realize as you mechanically eat your way through breakfast. That…used to be something that would bother you, wouldn’t it? You compose a text to your family that says simultaneously too much and too little, and save without sending.  
  
You tie up your short hair and lock it in place with a probably excessive number of bobby pins- hair in your eyes at a bad moment can be lethal and you aren’t going to make the same mistake twice. You slide your aunt’s old hunting knife into your back pocket and reach for the ski pole leaning against the wall on your way out the door. You’ve never actually skied before, but it is a good length, sturdy, and it comes to a sharp point.  
  
It’s a lovely day for genocide.

 

You are only a quarter of the way up the mountain when the Barrier breaks. The light show is impressive, though you are mostly occupied by wrapping yourself around the nearest tree as everything shudders. The ground itself jump and yaws, as if Mount Ebbot itself is about to tear itself from its moorings and go walking. But just as quickly as it started, it stills, and all that is left of the disturbance is the calls of alarmed birds. You pause for moment and send the text, then turn off your phone. Memory stirs, thrashing just under the surface. You can’t afford to get lost in it, so you restrict it to only the barest flow of information. Attack. Defense. Experience. It’s surprisingly easy to distance yourself. Time to get this over with.  
  
(You do not acknowledge the sour anxiety clawing its way up from your stomach, or the way your breath is coming out in little high pants. You are, after all, climbing a mountain. Of course you are a little out of breath.)

You keep climbing. The trail is familiar. This is a rut that you have carved yourself into, and inevitability keeps you going. Sometimes you think that if you really tried, you could get to the top before the barrier breaks, could get the jump on- but no, you promised to always give them a chance first. Besides, you’re not really sure if you could handle the waiting. So instead you keep up your leisurely pace and do not rush ahead. It would not do to arrive exhausted. 

Here. A widening of the path just before a branch in the trail. The exact details each reset changes, but the monsters always end up here on their way down the mountain.  
  
You lean your ski pole against a large rock and lever yourself down, after carefully checking around it. This mountain is infamous for sudden holes and unexplored caves of various depths, and you would rather not die to unexpected geography. Fortunately, the most you see are blooming flowers and tree roots. Satisfied, you munch your way through a frankly disgusting granola bar and wash away the taste with your battered water bottle. And you wait. 

The sun is low and sliding golden fingers through the trees by the time you hear the monsters coming, but that’s all right. Now that you’re here, in this place, you are overcome with a kind of serenity. There’s nothing else that you can do now. You’re pretty sure that you are going to die, but that’s hardly new at this point. Besides, you think, anticipation bubbling up under the veneer of calm, you might win this time. Whatever the forgotten man insists in your dreams, you can’t quite bring yourself to hope that the king of monsters will make a different choice. He’s just as set as you are, all choices already made and now only the consequences left.  
But if nothing else, you can keep it from being easy for him. 

The noises get louder- shouts, laughter, breaking twigs and pounding footsteps. You stand, feeling your back pop several times as you stretch, move to the exact center of the path, leaning on your pole as if it were a walking stick. And you wait. 

-

“GREETINGS STRANGE HUMAN! YOU ARE A HUMAN, CORRECT? ONLY YOU ARE MUCH TALLER THAN I WAS LEAD TO BELIEVE HUMANS WERE!”  
  
Not as planned not as planned notasplanned! “…HI?”  
  
You had told yourself that you were prepared for anything. You were not, however, prepared for stampeding skeletons. Somehow the two colliding impulses of incoming-attacker-kill-it and hey-isn’t-that- had lead to you completely freezing up. Which lead to your current position.  
  
“WHY ARE YOU STILL LYING ON THE GROUND, TALL HUMAN?” says the reason that you were on the ground at all.  
  
“…Contemplating my place in the universe,” you say instead.  
  
“ARE YOU SURE THAT IT’S ON THE GROUND?” Something large and red invades your vision for a moment and you flinch back, before realizing that it’s just a glove. The monster is offering you a hand up. You’re pretty sure at this point that you know who it (they? he?) is, but you ask anyway.  
“OH? YOU HAVE THE GREAT FORTUNE TO BE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS, CHEF AND MASCOT EXTRAORDINAIRE!” …yep. This is happening. You take his hand and he pulls you up without pausing his dramatic posing.  
  
“Pleased to meet you, Papyrus,” you say. He hasn’t let go of you yet, so you turn it into an awkward handshake.  
  
“Papyrus! What did I tell you about running off!” There’s a blue fish person in a tree yelling at you two. How did it get up there. How did you not notice it climbing up there. Why is it 30 feet up in a tree? With these considerations, it is no surprise that it takes a second before it clicks. And you’re lucky that she’s looking at Papyrus right now, because you aren’t sure what your face is doing. Ah. Her. Papyrus turns.  
  
“UNDYNE! UNDYNE! I FOUND A HUMAN AND THEY ARE PLEASED TO MEET ME!” At least you still have your ski pole in your free hand, because she’s about to start hurling those damned spears any second and- she’s looking at you now. Was probably asking you something.  
  
“Erm, I’m here to talk to your king?” And pray that he hasn’t started truly absorbing the souls yet, because this loop is weird enough already. At least you know that he hasn’t done it yet, as hundred-foot-tall goat-mountain abomination things are hard to miss.  
  
She looks a bit suspicious, but doesn’t immediately jump into a dramatic speech. You start to hope, just a little,as she turns to Papyrus to confer. Loudly. Do monsters just not have a concept of inside voices?  
  
The clearing is starting to fill up as other monsters catch up. Blobs and frogs and fire people and reindeer, on and on. And striding head and shoulders above them all is the king of monsters. No souls in evidence. You stand up just a bit straighter.  
  
And that’s when you realize… There’s a kid with them. The kid. You’ve never met them before, but you know. They are holding hands with a tall goat monster that you don’t think you’ve seen before, and smiling at a… is that a dinosaur? …Is that dinosaur sweating?  
  
But you still have to ask the question. So you stand before the king of monsters (and he you remember so, so well) and you- don’t get to ask it, because he smiles at you and starts excitedly asking for directions. And recommendations for places to stay. And if you happen to know the proper authorities to contact. And something about the child being the ambassador of monsters and…  
  
“Oh yeah, we come in peace, or something lame like that,” the undyne says, sounding vaguely disappointed.  
  
“Oh,” you say, feeling faintly stunned. “Well, that’s good.”


	2. Interim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter. Kinda not happy with its placement, but I couldn't think of a better place for it.

The first time is like this:  
  
There is no warning. You aren’t at your apartment, you’re treating your parents to a surprise lunch and catching up when the earth shakes and the sky changes and monsters start pouring from Mount Ebbott like an upturned anthill. And always ahead of them strides a giant stone monster (the mountain itself you thought at the time) shaped roughly like a lion or perhaps a goat, with horns scraping the sky and bright lights- green, yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, cyan- burning on his chest.  
  
You remember- you remember screaming. People running and pushing but with nowhere to go. And monsters, jumping, and flying and crawling. Anyone in their way dies in a hail of magic and bullets. And from each person that falls, hearts emerge- little colorful hearts- that the monsters take. With each heart, the monsters grow larger and more twisted. 

Just as you are being herded back towards the restaurant’s kitchens, the windows break, glass cascading over the floor like hail. Somewhere behind you a kid starts wailing.  
  
The monster hops in, fist-sized flies buzzing around its head. It-it was something like a frog, you think. It isn’t now. And you are so scared and so angry but above all your soul is humming that this isn’t right, this isn’t _just_ \- your hand closes around a chair. And you hit it and hit it until it collapses into dust and your chair shatters. But there are more coming through the broken windows so you grip your remaining chair leg and you _fight back._

There’s a child’s drawing of a heart shining pale yellow on your chest, and it grows brighter with each strike. How dare they- how _dare_ they! People join you with pots and kitchen knives and together you beat back the monsters away from the doors in a haze of adrenaline and rage. 

You manage to kill many of the things before some kind of flaming rope monster gets you around the ankle and your leg gives out. You break your chair leg ripping it away from you and pounding it into the ground as it chatters meaninglessly at you. After the first flash of pain, you can’t really feel the injury. Dimly, you remember that that’s a bad sign, but right now it’s fine by you. There are people that you love that you’re protecting, and you’ll do it with your damn teeth if you have to. 

And that’s when you hear the screaming behind you. You’re so sure that no one got past you all- but there’s more than one way into the restaurant’s kitchens, isn’t there? Your mother and father- this is your fault, if you’d only let them stay home they would have had time to escape… 

Wobbling, you look up from the splintered piece of wood in your hands and realize that you are alone. And you  
B  
R  
E  
A  
K

 

**SO THIS IS THE ABERRATION. HOW VERY INTERESTING.**


	3. In Which Everyone Takes A Nap, And Existential Crisis Are Avoided

You sit bolt upright, adrenaline pumping and your heart almost beating out of your chest (quite literally, you think you see a hint of a golden glow for a second before your hand reflexively covers it). It’s dark. And you’ve been sleeping in your reclining chair for some bizarre reason. Something about this strikes you as far more strange than it should be, but between the humming adrenaline and the fact that you are so, so tired, you get up before you think it through.  
  
And almost trip over a sleeping monster as you do so. A weird little jester thing, cuddled around a child-sized mouse. You pause a moment to collect your thoughts, and you’re pretty sure that the forgotten man is laughing at you somewhere. Or maybe just signing ‘H-A-H-A-H-A’ over and over again. 

There are monsters in your house. Quite a lot of them, in fact. Your pull-out couch is being used as a bed for the first time in your memory, and the cushions and spare blankets have been commandeered elsewhere. It’s fortunate that you are always cold, because it’s resulted in almost enough blankets to go around. You go make yourself a cup of tea in your apartment’s tiny kitchenette (the sink and counter have been taken over by an improbably well-muscled sea…horse? Wow okay, but he’s pretty much dead to the world and doesn’t even twitch as you work around him).

Right. Sometime during the long walk down the mountain before the blur of reporters and police and lights and utter chaos that followed (but it was surprise, not fear or utter shock that you saw on many faces, and wasn’t that interesting…), you’d offered to let anyone who couldn’t find their own lodgings stay in your apartment. Most of them actually went back up the mountain, but a few had taken you up on it. Which led to your current situation, with two skeletons snoozing on your pullout couch, a ghost in your bathroom, and an honest-to-goodness geriatric snapping turtle snoring loudly from your bedroom. 

The predawn light has brightened enough for you to see better now, and you stand there nursing your tea and watching twelve peacefully sleeping monsters that haven’t attacked anyone, including you. You’re alive. You haven’t had to fight and you’re alive. The world has shifted in a way that you had never dared hope for since your days started repeating. 

…What do you do now?

Go back to bed is what you do now, dammit. It’s too early in the morning for facing existential crisis like an adult. You pick your way back through the sleeping monsters (they’re kinda cute when they aren’t giant and murdery), curl up in your recliner in the smallest ball you can manage, and resolutely ignore everything for the next few hours. 

You wake up again to sunlight and a quiet apartment, and for a moment you are terrified that you dreamed it all. That you’re starting over and-  
No, you don't have time for this. Think. You're in a chair, not your bed, and there's a blanket thrown over you that wasn't there before. You force yourself to get up (and wince because your back did not appreciate a night in a recliner), and head to the kitchen, where a massacre has apparently taken place. There's a note on the counter and someone has done your dishes (a pristine island surrounded by stray dry spaghetti and suspicious red stains), but no monsters.  
The note is written in glitter pens:  
  
DEAR TALL HUMAN  
AS WE DID NOT WISH TO DISTURB YOUR NAP, WE DECIDED TO SURPRISE YOU WITH BREAKFAST IN BED! HOWEVER!! UNFORTUNATELY YOUR INGREDIENTS WERE NOT UP TO THE CHEFLY STANDARDS OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS! YOUR HUMAN SPAGHETTI SAUCE WAS FAR TO HOT! SO INSTEAD! WE HAVE DECIDED TO GO OUT AND SAMPLE YOUR EXOTIC HUMAN CULINARY DELIGHTS AND WE WILL BRING YOU BACK A DONUT!

SIGNED  
THE GREAT PAPYRUS (AND ASSOCIATES)  
  
There are several other signatures after his. Oh wow, he actually writes in caps lock, you think. Well, that explained the Sriracha sauce on the ceiling, at least. And the open Tabasco bottle over there... and the jar of ghost peppers that you impulse-bought, you're not really sure why that's out. You don't actually own any spaghetti sauce.  
(You do not have a hot sauce problem. You can stop whenever you want.)

It is only then that you realize that if time has stopped resetting, you're probably going to have to go grocery shopping. And _clean things._  
...  
Dammit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someday I will write longer chapters with actual character interaction, I swear.  
> Reader is currently very outwardly chill (if weirdly serious sometimes), but internally swinging between panic attacks and not giving any fucks.   
> Comments and critiques are welcome, this is the most haphazard story I've ever written so it could use some help.


	4. In Which A Dead Man and A Human Have A Nice Chat In The Void

**“Mal.”**  
  
“Dead man.”  
  
**“I really would prefer that you desist with that name. Quite apart from being inaccurate, it sounds like a threat,”** he says, or something like that. Despite whatever he’d done the first time you met that let you read his sign language without him having to finger spell absolutely everything, you were still shit at the grammar. It didn’t help that most of the time, the important part was what he didn’t say.  
  
“Pretty sure I couldn’t do much to you that you haven’t already done to yourself,” you admit. “So to what do I owe the honor? Kinda expected you to show up sooner, honestly.”  
  
The darkness of the void surrounds you both, silent but for the sound of the wind. The monster before you seems to be melting into it, except for his thin hands, which he kept rotated towards you, even as his face turns away. **“In approximately 87% of known loops, the reset occurs within the first 48 hours of the Barrier’s breach.”** Translation: it hasn’t, so it’s going to be a while.  
  
“So… does that mean that we’re done? This is it?”  
  
**“Likely.”**  
  
“You gonna stick around, then? Keep haunting my dreams?”  
  
**“Unlikely. There are parallel time loops that require monitoring. Now that the aberrant loops have stabilized, there will be no more need for my presence, barring incidents.”** Unless you fuck things up, were the unspoken words. And what does it say about you that you’re a little tempted? He frowns, and you know he can see your guilt on your face. **“Mal. If you do not control yourself, your Level of Violence will become noticeable to those around you.”** …That sounds fake, but okay. **“And do not forget that you have only just met them. Revealing too much knowledge would be unwise. You are not the only one with knowledge of time’s anomaly.”**   
  
“Hey, hey, you know that nobody wants this shit over and done with more than me. I won’t start anything.” But if someone else does, well. The man who was forgotten is not the only one who can say the most important parts through omission. You paste on a smile. “But playing dumb would probably have been easier if you hadn’t insisted on dumping all those memories on me.”  
  
**“They were necessary to give you a full understanding of the situation.”**  
  
“Right. Of course.” Sure, the backstory had helped, but he’d also thrown in a lot of unnecessary things. Memories of being happy, friendships and conversations with monsters who were never your enemies, all distant echoes of a loop where the kid got to the surface on the first try and you never had to know. It’s easy to tell them from your own memories, now. The person you are in them and the person that you are now is so very different.  
  
No, you didn’t need any of that, but that’s not why he gave them to you. You’re pretty sure that the skeleton brothers are his kids, even if he hasn’t admitted to it. For all his aloof behavior, he wants to keep his family and his people safe. He gave you those useless memories to make you hesitate. You understand, but you doubt you’ll ever be able to forgive him for it.  
  
“I’m going to wake up now,” you say, as if you had any control over it. “Any messages you want me to pass on? Like say, to family and friends?”  
He pointedly ignores the implication, to your disappointment.  
  
**“Remember your promises,”** he signs instead, like he has every time your conversation ends. The dark of the void begins to wrap around you. **“And… Mal?”**  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
**“Try to live well.”** The darkness swallows up your laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was going to be a chapter in-between this one and the last, but it was taking a while and worked better in a later chapter. So instead we get a slightly confusing Gaster conversation. Gaster if you're leaving already why did I bother putting you in the tags? Honestly.


	5. In Which There Is Actual Forward Plot Movement

You stare, unblinking, at your ceiling. So that’s it then. The repeating hell that you’ve been trapped in is apparently over. You’re the only one who remembers. If you told someone, would they believe you? The thought fills you with something you can’t quite describe.   
…Live well, huh? You honestly haven’t put any thought into living at all. But the monsters are settling in with a smoothness that is shocking even them, as if the whole town has been unconsciously waiting for them. And for all you know, it has. You don’t hold a monopoly on loop memories. But your apartment has emptied out as the monsters find better arrangements, so you’re down to two skeletons and- no, wait, Aaron the Seahorse is moving in to an apartment over the gym. Time moves forward, and you’re not entirely prepared. And even as you try to pack up all your emotions in a box for later (forever, if you have anything to say about it), old worries take their place. 

Shit, you’re really going to need to clean. And look for a less shitty job, because you sincerely doubt that your temper will allow you to continue in retail. And find new roommates before your landlord kicks you out. And do laundry. ffffffff….  
Being the mature adult that you are, you ignore all of that and start reading a much-neglected book on historical generals. Which its not avoidant behavior and you will fight anyone who says differently. 

You’re actually getting fairly into your book when Papyrus’s irate shout of ‘SAAAAAAAANS!’ makes you look up. Papyrus is dramatically pointing at the floor, and holds the pose until Sans finally ambles into the room.  
  
“what’s up, bro?”  
  
“BROTHER! IS THAT A SOCK?”  
  
“looks like it.”  
  
“AND ANOTHER SOCK OVER HERE!”  
  
“maybe they’re stocking you.”  
  
“SANS FOR THE LAST TIME THIS IS A NICE PLACE” Awww, Papyrus. “I WILL NOT HAVE YOU BESMIRCHING IT WITH SUCH SCANDALOUS FRIPPERIES!”  
  
“darn.”  
  
“I could just throw them in the-“ you start to offer.  
  
“NO, LEAVE IT BE, HE MUST LEARN THIS WAY!”  
  
“but bro…”  
  
“NO EXCUSES!”  
  
Those were absolutely your socks from last night. Sans is giving Papyrus the injured fawn eyes of falsely-accused siblings everywhere. You should probably rescue him.  
…Eh. You go back to reading your book, ignoring any accusing stares sent your way. You’re starting to ship Stilicho and Alaric a little.

The not-so-subtle email reminder from your landlord the next day brings things to a head. You need at least one, preferably two roommates, and hopefully ones less flighty than the last two. Which should be easy, given that one eloped with a lady from Australia and stole your radio (joke’s on her, though, you kept her rice cooker). But where on earth could you find two such- _yes dammit you considered the skeleton brothers you’re not an idiot._

It’s just that you’re pretty sure that the whole reason you’re even considering asking is due to those memories the dead man stuffed in your head. You’d lived next door to them, in those, you think, but they always seemed to be visiting.  
But.  
You do need new roommates. You also need to keep an eye on the monsters, preferably from a close distance. And, well, you like these two. Papyrus is great, and his brother seems pretty chill.  
Of course, that assumes that they would want to live with you at all. Turns out monsters are freaking rich, their currency is literally solid gold coins, and the skeleton brothers could almost certainly do better than a shared apartment with questionable heating and an even more questionable human.  
Shit. You’re going to have to ask them, though. In a calm, mature, and reasonable-  
“YO PAPYRUS DO YOU AND SANS WANT TO STAY HERE? I NEED ROOMMATES!”  
On the other hand, you can’t be trusted not to fuck up actual personal interaction, so yelling from across the room it is. 

There’s a muffled exclamation from the other room, then some hurried whispering that you pretend not to hear. Papyrus appears to be doing some kind of happy dance. It suddenly occurs to you that they probably hadn’t figured out what they were doing next either, and were just as lost as you. 

“HOUSE MEETING!” Papyrus cries, then apparently remembers that technically that includes you. “SKELETONS ONLY!” Well, technically… Nah.

When they finally reenter the room, you’d like to say you are nervous, but the apartment’s soundproofing is no match for Papyrus, and you’re pretty sure what they’ve decided based on the half of the conversation you heard. Including him practicing the speech he’s giving you right now, which includes the promise of “ROOMMATE BUDDY BONDING EXERCISES” … oh boy. 

Papyrus is also assembling a list. Somehow the glitter makes it more official. Apparently. 

HOUSE RULES

1\. NO DOGS (Particularly The Small And Annoying Kind)  
2\. PICK UP YOUR SOCKS!!!  
3.  
The last one is in Sans’ handwriting. You reach over his shoulder and add:  
4\. No pranks involving anyone’s bed or whatever they use to wake up in the morning.  
(Sans and you share a look of mutual understanding. It’s a sacred trust, dammit.)  
5\. No mental or emotional breakdowns on my couch. If you gotta have them, have them on the beanbag chair or in your room.”  
  
Papyrus takes your pen away, citing aesthetic reasons, which is rather unfair. Your handwriting isn’t any worse than Sans’.  
“why do you even have that rule?”  
  
“Past roommates,” you say, your eye twitching slightly. “Oh, and Papyrus, maybe a note about no projectiles indoors. That means no bullets, or whatever you two use-“  
  
“OUR BONES AND BLUE ATTACKS!” Papyrus interjects, dutifully writing it down.  
  
“…Seriously?” Did- did they just detach or- images of Papyrus throwing his arm at someone pass through your head.  
  
“yeah, no bones about it.”  
  
“SSSSSAAAANS.” You walked right into that one, didn’t you?  
  
“add no swearing to the list, while you’re at it,” Sans mumbles, while Papyrus is distracted. Ffffffudge that’s going to be hard to keep to, even with the implied ‘in front of Papyrus’ addition. Not that you would do that deliberately. Swearing in front of Papyrus would be like swearing in front of your grandma. Well. Not your grandma, she swears like a drunken sailor on shore leave. But someone else’s grandma.  
  
“hey, by the way, why us?” Sans asks. You pause. Honestly, you don't know much about him, beyond 'Brother of Papyrus' and 'Son of that Guy Who Doesn't Exist, Theoretically'. And something about timeline fuckery, so he probably knows something about the resets. Also he's the laziest person you've ever met, so probably not much of a threat.  
  
“Why not? You two are cool. And the apartment is too big for just me.” I don’t remember seeing you two in any of my loops, you don’t say. I never had to kill you, you also don’t say.  
  
“BROTHER! LET US INSPECT THE PREMISES!”  
  
“Pap, we’ve already been here for three days, you’re not going to find anything new.”  
  
“NOT WITH THAT KIND OF ATTITUDE, WE WON’T! ONWARD, SANS!” Papyrus effortlessly picks Sans up and marches off with him, while you compose an email to your landlord and listen for the sound of things breaking. 

“HUMAN.” Papyrus is back. You’re starting to suspect that he’s forgotten your name, and is trying to hide it.  
  
“Yes?” you try.  
  
“I HAVE SOME CONCERNS ABOUT THE CONTENTS OF YOUR FRIDGE.”  
  
“Yes?” Shit, you forgot to go shopping. Damn linear time.  
  
“NAMELY, THAT IT SEEMS TO CONTAIN ONLY A BAG OF LEMONS AND BOTTLES OF A STRANGE, UNREASONABLY SPICY LIQUID. AND CHEESE.”  
  
“I like lemons,” you say defensively. “And there are vegetables in the drawer!” Papyrus withdraws a bag of wilted spinach and a single carrot. You don’t like the way he’s looking at you. Okay, yeah, so you may have been subsisting on bread, cheese, and stir-fry for… a while, but it’s economical! And one of your old roommates had brought Chinese takeout home all the time, and each of those little condiment packets were exactly 1tbsp, so you wouldn’t have to worry about buying things like soy sauce or mustard for another six months! At least you weren’t surviving solely on ramen anymore! Papyrus is still giving you a Look, and you wish he would stop.  
  
“…I’ll go grocery shopping tonight,” you say weakly. “Do you want anything?” Papyrus raises his arms, seems to think better of it, and turns it into a dramatic pose.  
  
“WE SHALL GO TOGETHER! I SHALL COLLECT THE INGREDIENTS FOR A PROPER NEW APARTMENT SPAGHETTI!” Memories of the last time this skeleton was anywhere near your kitchen flash through your head. You still haven’t gotten the stains off the ceiling.  
  
“…Maybe I’ll cook tonight as a welcome to the surface meal. You wanted to try human food, right?” Not that you had any idea how the heck that worked when one was a freaking skeleton.  
  
“YOU… WANT TO COOK FOR ME?” Papyrus is very still for a long moment, and you start to wonder if you’d done something wrong and if you should apologize. Then- “WOWIEE!” ohshithelp “A FELLOW STUDENT OF THE CULINARY ARTS! I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!”  
  
“Yesgreatpleaseputmedownnow?” you manage to wheeze. Papyrus continues talking, but you are eased back down to the floor with commendable speed. You’d never actually known anyone tall or strong enough to actually pick you up before. You… may have some apologies to make to your shorter friends. But first- to figure out if skeleton monsters have dietary restrictions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Mal is shipping two Roman-Byzantine generals together. Yes, Mal is trash.  
> If you're wondering why this whole thing is a bit incoherent, it's because 1. I'm writing this in bits and pieces and assembling them later, and 2. the entire thing is being written at 1 in the morning. That's basically the only chance I have to write.  
> Comments are appreciated!


	6. In which there is... fluff?

In an attempt to prove to the skeleton brothers that you are a functional adult with a fully stocked fridge and a grocery list longer than three items… You may have overdone it. A little. It doesn’t help that you keep sleeping too much or too little, so you bake instead. And three batches of cookies, two kinds of dessert breads, and a pan of brownies later, you realized that you should probably have an excuse. 

So you stuff roughly half of it into what you mentally dub a Welcome to the Surface, Try Not to Start a War basket, and take it to the old community center turned Monster Embassy. 

And normally you would have handed your welcome basket off to whoever answered the door and went on your way, but that happened to be Undyne. So now you were here, standing in the kitchen of the temporary Monster Embassy, making small talk with the enthusiastic fish woman who killed you six times. More, if you count all the times she’d maimed you badly enough that Asgore killed you easily. And, well, you’ve killed her eight times, which oddly enough doesn’t make you feel better. 

And now she’s nerding out to you about anime and her super-cute dinosaur girlfriend.  
It’s a pity. In another world, you would have loved Undyne. Probably would have had an embarrassingly awkward squishy ace crush on her. And even now, with the part of you that isn’t concerned with the way your skin is trying to crawl off your bones to get away from her, you have to admit that Undyne is really cool. You mostly just wish she would stop grabbing you. 

“And here’s what me n’ Alphys are going to cosplay at UnderCon, once we get permission from King Asgore to host it!” Huh. She tilts the screen closer to you and starts scrolling through various anime group shots. Sailor Moon, Utena, some 80’s catgirl fanservice anime you don’t recognize, …Madoka Magicka? Really? “Alphys says we should narrow it down to five, but I say we should just wear all of them! Like, at once!”  
  
“…Did you choose Madoka just because there’s a red-head with a spear in it?”  
  
“I, uh, yeah. We haven’t gotten to watch that one yet, but I know it’s going to be AWESOME!”  
  
“You should, there’s an adorable mascot character and the story is really cute,” you say, with a perfectly straight face. “While you’re at it, have you started watching Miyazaki movies yet? Some of them are focussed more towards kids, but they’re all great films.”  
  
“Hell yeah! My girlfriend loves that kind of sappy sh- stuff!” Undyne says, glancing nervously around for Toriel.  
  
“Try a My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies double feature then,” you say, pretty sure that you’re getting LV for this.  
  
“Awesome! …Hey, how did you know I use spears anyway?” Undyne asks, just as Frisk walks in with Toriel in tow. The kid is carrying a potted plant of some kind- oh no wait, it’s talking and it has a face, it’s some kind of monster. A loudly complaining monster. In its irritation it starts spiting out small, white- shit projectiles shit shit shit UP

The bullets ricocheted harmlessly, having not actually been aimed at anyone in particular. You hear a window break, but no screams.  
When Papyrus and his brother walk in, Toriel is scolding the plant monster, Undyne is challenging it to a duel, Frisk has wandered off in search of a watering can, and you’re… on top of the kitchen cabinets, about ten feet up with your back pressed against the ceiling, trying to get your heart to stop literally beating out of your chest.

…In hindsight you may have overreacted. You settle back down onto the cabinet, in hopes that everyone forgets that you exist. It’s actually quite comfortable up here. You might just take a nap. Panic was tiring. 

“hey, tori, we’ed herb a pot of noise, flowery doing in here?” Ow. OW. Physical pain from that barrage of terrible. Papyrus makes a shrieking tea-kettle noise between his teeth, and you mercifully miss Toriel’s response.  
  
“ERR, UNDYNE? WHAT IS THE TALL HUMAN DOING UP THERE?” Dammit.  
  
“It was AWESOME! She just bounced off the counter and threw herself up there- like one of those anime cat-girls! Just wait till I tell Alphys!” Aaaand she’s gone. Great, this was never going to be forgotten. 

Sans is giving you a funny look. “you uh… want to get down any time soon?”  
  
“…Not really, no.” You’re not sure how you’d do it, anyway. You’re really high up. You wonder if you could get a decent footing on the counter to help yourself down. You look over the edge-  
…  
You resign yourself to your fate. You are doomed to spend the rest of your life on top of these cabinets, subsisting on dust bunnies and the kindness of passerby. Hermits used to do that, right? You’ll be a hermit.  
The short skeleton is laughing at you. Papyrus peers up at you.  
“NOT TO FEAR, TALL HUMAN! LEAP INTO MY ARMS AND I WILL CATCH YOU!”  
  
“…No.”  
  
“I THOUGHT YOU MIGHT SAY THAT! WHICH IS WHY I HAVE REQUISITIONED A CHAIR!” You blink, and look over the edge again, only to meet with Papyrus’s face. Er, skull. He reaches over and carefully drags you off the cabinet before you can object. You do _not_ squeak.  
After a moment of not falling or being set down on the floor, you open an eye. Papyrus is still carrying you in a surprisingly gentle grip, as if you don’t weigh anything. It’s a strangely safe feeling, as the room seems to be slowly… rotating…  
  
“Papyrus, did you requisition a spinny chair?”  
  
“I MIGHT HAVE.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mal's weaknesses: heights and genuinely nice people.


	7. In Which A Human Gives Some Skeletons The Talk. No, Not That One.

The rest of the visit is fairly uneventful. You go to extreme lengths to make the fact that you won't turn your back to Undyne less obvious, Sans and the Queen of Monsters enable each other's terrible pun habits, and Frisk puts the angry plant on a time-out. Papyrus goes outside for two minutes and manages to accidentally traumatize some small children, who are unintentionally rescued by a very confused Alphys, who finds herself signing a kid’s triceratops. You take the opportunity to escape with the last sheds of your dignity and an invitation to visit for dinner that weekend. Queen Toriel really does seem sweet, even if she looks way too much like Asgore for your peace of mind. She’s already demanded recipes. 

You return home to find that Sans and Papyrus somehow managed to beat you back by ten minutes, and now you don’t have a kettle. Instead, you have a lump of glowing-hot metal that would not be out of place in a modern art exhibit. Both Sans and Papyrus are being extremely reticent about the circumstances of this incident, if very apologetic. Something about friendship tea? "It’s not really important, it’s just a kettle," you say, at last. Unfortunately, Papyrus is filled convinced that damaging a roommate’s property is the worst possible thing, and you find yourself and Sans trying desperately to get the tall skeleton to stop crying. 

“AND I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY WERE SCARED OF ME! I AM VERY IMPRESSIVE, THIS IS TRUE, BUT MY INTENTIONS WERE FRIENDLY!” huh, the topic has shifted a bit. Is this what he is really sad about? 

“some humans are just like that about monsters, bro.”

“BUT THEY LIKED ALPHYS!” Say something reassuring say something reassuring-

“Well, she is a dinosaur monster. Kids love dinosaurs. The walking dead take a bit more getting used to. I’m sure they’ll like you when they get to know you!” Nailed it.

“…the what.”

“I mean, obviously you guys aren’t zombies or anything, but it’s still a bit alarming at first glance.”

“no really the what.”

“ER. HUMAN? I MUST CONFESS TO SOME CONFUSION.” You pause, blinking at Papyrus. Does he not know? 

You look back at Sans, and, yeah, that puzzled look is genuine.  
…They don’t know. They actually don’t know. Dammit, Frisk. Is this- are you actually going to have to give them The Human Talk? This is somehow worse than the regular talk! 

“mal?”

Nonono, you can do this. What about ‘Humans are skeletons in meat sacks’? No, that ends in Papyrus hysterically trying to free you from your skin. Humans have skeletons inside them NO. Even though neither of them would probably get the double entendre, you wouldn’t be able to say it with a straight face. Sans is looking at you with an unusual level of apprehension. 

“Humans have a skeletal structure,” you say instead, and pull on your cheek so that they can get a good look at your back teeth. “We look like you guys on the inside.” Well, kinda. Sans and Papyrus are a little softer around the edges than human skeletons. More like the idea of a skeleton than the real thing. 

“is this one of your weird human jokes?”

“Did you seriously not notice how much humans are shaped like you?”

“eh,” Sans grunts. “you kinda look like undyne, too.” You’re pretty sure he’s furiously texting Frisk under the table.

“SO YOU’RE SAYING… HUMANS HAVE SKELETONS INSIDE THEM.” Dammit Papyrus. At least he’s forgotten to be sad? 

“Yes,” you say, with considerable effort. “Only we need all the other bits to live, since we aren’t magic.”

“but how does that even… hang on, alphys is going to flip.” 

“And, uh, usually when people see skeletons, it means somebody died. Since we don’t turn to dust, but rather decay gradually until that’s all that is left.” 

“WE LOOK LIKE DEAD HUMANS! SANS THIS IS TERRIBLE!” Sans himself is looking a little sick. You privately swear an oath to keep them out of the ancient Egypt exhibit at the museum at all costs. Meanwhile, Papyrus has come to some kind of revelation.  
“MAL! OUR FIRST MEETING! WHEN YOU FELL OVER! WAS IT BECAUSE OF MY APPEARANCE?”

“No, it was because you knocked me over, Papyrus,” you sigh. And here you thought you were handling this well. “Seriously, calm down, skeletons really aren’t scary to most people. Heck, the art majors will probably beg you to model for them.” 

“M-MODEL?” Oh wow, could Papyrus switch moods fast. 

“Yeah?” you try, leaning back in your chair and away from his sudden intrusion on your personal space. “You have to draw skeletons to learn basic proportions. The colleges rely on people donating their skeletons, but they’re really fragile and expensive. You could probably just walk into the art department and get hired as an artist’s model.” 

“and what’s that require?” Sans says, looking a bit suspicious. 

“Staying still for a long time while people draw you?” 

“huh. and you get paid for this.” Sans is trying not to look like he just found out that he’s going to Disney World.

“There’s live human models, and they get paid, so yeah.” 

“SANS! DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? I WILL BE THE SUBJECT OF MASTERPIECES! HUMANS AND MONSTERS WILL CROWD AROUND TO SEE MY FACE!” The sudden mental image of Papyrus as the Mona Lisa sends you into a fit of giggles. 

“They’ll mostly be students, Papyrus,” you say as you finally regain control of your voice. 

“BUT WITH ME AS THEIR MODEL, THEY WON’T BE ABLE TO CREATE ANYTHING LESS THAN MASTERPIECES!” 

“better be careful, though. i hear those artists can be kinda sketchy.”

“SANS.”

“i’m just saying, you wouldn’t want them to frame you for something.”

“SANS DO NOT RUIN THIS FOR ME.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to Hebiscus, without whom this fic would be dead, and Greyscales, who is just the best.


	8. In Which There Is Terrible Betrayal

“Papyrus, why?” you sob, clutching at his gloves across the table. How could you have ever trusted a monster? This- this is truly the _ultimate betrayal!_  
  
“I AM SORRY HUMAN. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY.”  
  
“But I thought we were friends!”  
  
Papyrus hesitates, clearly wavering. “HUMAN I-“  
  
“bro. mal is utterly merciless. you gotta get them before they turn on you.”  
  
“I would never!” you protest, shooting Sans a dirty look.  
  
“avenge me, bro!”  
  
“HUMAN. THE CARD SAYS TO DRAW FOUR,” Papyrus says firmly.  
  
You sag in defeat. “Fiiiine.” Your epic revenge on Sans can wait till next turn. You’re pretty sure he’s cheating somehow. Nobody should have that many skip cards.  
  
“NEW COLOR IS RED.” Dammit. This is not what you had in mind when you dug your uno cards out for “Roommate Bonding Activities” to make up for making the skeletons sad.  
  
“Just you wait till we play checkers,” you mutter at Sans. “Just you wait.” Huh. Maybe you could get a big enough group together to play Mafia? It’s been ages since you were able to play that.  
  
“guess you’ll just have to deal until then,” Sans says, dropping a red skip on the pile.  
  
“SANS NO!”  
  
“sans yes.”  
  
Papyrus’s phone rings and he leaps from the table to get it, and you take the chance to play your own Draw-Four, grinning evilly at Sans.  
“merciless,” he mumbles.  
  
“Yellow,” you decide.  
  
“ER, MAL? UNDYNE WANT’S TO TALK TO YOU. FOR SOME REASON.” You take the phone, feeling mildly confused.  
  
“Youuuuu,” hisses the voice on the other end of the line.  
  
“Me?”  
  
“YOU.” Wow. You have literally battled this woman to the death on multiple occasions, and you don’t think she’s ever sounded this mad. You look over at the clock.  
  
“Undyne, it’s almost midnight. What is it?”  
  
“Ma. Do. Ka.”  
  
“Oh. Watched it tonight, huh.”  
  
“You made Alphys cry.”  
  
“Oops.”  
  
“You made _me_ cry.”  
  
“Yes, that’s a common reaction.” Undyne hisses in response, then breathes out slowly.  
  
“You know what, punk? This doesn’t even get to me. We’re gonna watch cute anime movies about kids and fireflies and it’s gonna be _great,_ and you can keep being a jerk.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan.” There’s a strangled scream on the other line, then the fish lady hangs up noisily. This probably isn’t going to backfire horribly on you. Sans starts edging away from you, and Papyrus looks worried. You should probably stop smiling like that.  
“Hey Papyrus, it’s your turn. Color is yellow.” Hopefully this is the last round. All you really want to do right now is sleep.

  


You wake up to screaming, which is a little embarrassing. You’d thought you’d gotten past that stage. Hopefully nobody heard, that would be a pain to explain away.  
  
…Wait. _That’s not you._  
  
You’re out of bed and across the room before you’re even totally awake. Blue light flashes from Sans’s room, and Papyrus nearly bulldozes over you in his hurry to get there. The second he throws open the door, the screaming cuts off, as does the light.  
  
Uhm. You stand there blinking in the hallway, waiting for the adrenaline to fade and the rest of your brain to wake up.  
  
The voices in the next room are uncommonly quiet (you actually can’t hear everything Papyrus is saying, which is a first), but there are clearly a lot of emotions that you are not prepared to handle going on in there. Even standing nearby makes you feel like a bit of a voyeur. So instead you about-face to the kitchen and make everybody cups of tea. In the microwave. Like a heathen. 

You’re about to go poke your head in the door to see if the emotions are over yet, when Papyrus stumbles back down the hall. You wordlessly hand him his cup (raspberry, with enough honey to drown a bee) and wave off his attempt to apologize. A couple minutes later Sans wanders in in a post-nightmare haze, and starts a little when he sees you. You pass him a mug of the disgustingly overbrewed breakfast tea that he insists on drinking, and he takes it without comment. You really aren’t up for talking, anyway, so you stand on cold kitchen tile in the artificial light, sipping hot tea and letting the night’s shadows slip away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fluff can't last forever...


	9. In Which There Is Mario Kart

Saturday night, and again you’re spending your time surrounded by monsters. But on the bright side, there’s pie!  
Short of faking sick, there’s no way you could talk your way out of the dinner at Tori- the Queen of monster’s home. Which blessedly is not the same place that the monster king lives.  
  
Anyway. Pie. It’s so big it’s almost intimidating. The smell alone is divine.  
  
“That is for after dinner, Frisk!” Toriel says, rushing into the kitchen. You try to pretend that you were not also drooling.  
  
“There’s an ancient human proverb,” you inform her. “Life is short, eat dessert first.” Frisk nods solemnly.  
  
Toriel regards you with mock seriousness. She’s met with twin hopeful looks. “Oh, well, if this is about tradition…” you are not too proud to use puppy eyes on a monster. “I suppose I made it big enough for everyone to have a small piece now and another later? After all, cross-cultural experiences are a big pie-ority of mine!” Frisk raises their hands in a silent cheer as Toriel pulls out the pie server.  
You’re not sure what to make of the monster’s tiny ambassador. You’ve got what Gaster told you, of course, but this is your first loop actually meeting them properly.  
  
(You remember a little red heart cupped in a pair of enormous paws and your smile slips a little.)  
  
“hey tori, papyrus and i finished setting up mariokart, if you want to get a round in.”  
  
“Sorry, Sans, I suppose you could say that I was otherwise… pieoccupied!” aaaaaaagh not this again.  
  
“how about you two?”  
  
“Nah, I’m terrible at video games,” you say, accepting your piece of pie. Frisk has somehow already devoured theirs, and runs off into the living room with Papyrus’s piece.  
  
“i’m sure if you appie yourself, you’ll improve.”  
  
“No. None of that.”  
  
“The piessibilities are endless if you piersevere,” Toriel says, looking unduly proud of herself.  
  
“Shame on both your houses.” You take a bite in hopes that it’ll end the impromptu pun compietition… oh dammit, they’ve got you doing it.  
  
!!!!! this pie!!!  
  
“I take it you like it?”  
  
“I’m gonna have to beg you for the recipe,” you manage around a mouthful.  
  
It- dissolved? What? Toriel laughs at your expression. You take another bite, just to be sure. Somewhere right around the act of swallowing, the bite disappears, leaving only the lingering flavor of butterscotch.  
  
“Is this your first time having monster food?” Toriel asks. “It’s made with magic, so I’m afraid I can’t pass on the recipe. Although maybe with the right substitutions…”  
  
Magic? You smile, and ignore the uneasiness in the back of your mind. Monster food. And there’s the paranoia, right on schedule. Lovely. Well, if you’ve already cursed yourself, you might as well eat the rest of the piece. It really is very good. _Like honey to the throat, but poison in the blood._ Dammit!  
  
You follow the others into the living room, pretending that you aren’t having an internal crisis about the possible addictive nature of magic food. You stumble across the most intense Mario Kart game you’ve ever witnessed. Well, intense for everyone except Toriel, who is happily driving around the circuit and cheering every time she gets a coin. Bless. And Papyrus is playing Yoshi. But Frisk seems to have turned into a different person behind the controller, and is engaging in a death race against the flower, which Sans seems to be encouraging with an excessive number of last-minute blue shells.  
  
You hear the doorbell ring, and Toriel leaps up (just as her character falls off the map again). You’re busy watching Papyrus win for the third time (the flower monster is accusing Sans of favoritism), so you can perhaps be forgiven for not paying too much attention. That was a mistake.  
Your only warning is the hum of familiar magic in the air, and the sudden remembrance that _Undyne and Alphys were invited too._  
  
“YOOOOOUUU!” The floor glows blue beneath your feet, but that's the kind of trick that only works once, and you’ve seen it before. You take two quick steps to the left, feeling a bit irritated. She’s barely even trying. Ooop, trying a bit more than you thought. Backpedal, now. Wait for the spears to rise (Toriel’s poor rug!), then the moment they’re down, _charge._  
  
Zig-zag around the spears she’s throwing up as a reflex, come at her from the side that doesn’t have the yellow lizard so she can’t impale you/Mal just as y-Mal reaches her and-  
Mal doesn’t have her weapon in her hand. Why? Where is it? Mal backpedals quickly, vaulting over the couch before the spears can reach her. Another monster is yelling in the background, but not yet involved. Knife is in back pocket. Mal- no. What are you doing? 

Suddenly, everything is on fire, and you had nothing to do with it. You panic for a second before realizing that the fire isn’t actively burning you. Or the furniture. Undyne’s looking a bit uncomfortable though. The whole room feels like an oven.  
  
…What were you doing?  
  
“There will be no fighting in this house.” Toriel draws herself up to her full height. “Am I understood?” Eeep. The fire goes out in a curl of smoke, but Undyne is still sweating nervously. You ease your hand away from your back pocket.  
  
“Yes Ma’am.”/“Yes Queen Toriel.”  
  
“Now. Apologize. No, not you Alphys, you didn’t do anything.”  
  
Undyne turns to you, sullenly. You guiltily straighten up from your crouch.  
  
“Sorry?” If you say it quickly enough, it won’t matter if you don’t mean it. “Hi, Alphys.” The dinosaur hesitantly waves back.  
  
“Sorry, I gueeee-“ Undyne trails off, staring at your chest. Normally that just gets people slapped, but in this case the object of interest is more clearly your soul. Which showed up in the fight, and seems quite content to just hang out now that it’s over. You give it a look normally reserved for particularly putrid roadkill.  
  
“Undyne!” Toriel says, looking aghast.  
  
“I didn’t do it!” Undyne protests. “Well, okay, I did the thing with the spears, but that was just a joke!” You cover your soul protectively from the collective staring.  
  
“Oh, um. Well. This may be a little sudden, but that heart you’re holding is your soul. You see-“  
  
“Yeah, I know. Don’t worry about it, it just does this sometimes.” Go in, go back in, you stupid thing, nobody wants you out here.  
  
“WHAT IS GOING ON OVER THERE?” Aw, you interrupted the game with attempted murder. Sorry, Papyrus.  
  
“uh. are we interrupting anything?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Split this chapter in half, as it was getting too long.  
> Could not resist the Christina Rossetti quote. Food made of magic that has strange properties and tastes supernaturally good? C'mon.


	10. In Which There Is Polite Conversation and Fire

Historically speaking, having monsters this near your soul has always been a bad thing.  
  
…You promised that you’d stop thinking like that.  
  
Deep breaths, that’s the key. You begin the slow process of returning your soul back to its proper place, pretending that you weren’t being stared at by a bunch of curious and/or suspicious monsters.  
  
“I thought Humans didn’t know anything about summoning out their souls,” Undyne says, leaning over your shoulder. You twitch a little, and your soul remains defiantly outside your body.  
  
“Dunno,” you say. “It just does that when I startle sometimes.” You prod an experimental finger at it, and the little yellow heart seems to shudder away from your hand. Which, uh, fair, but also this is your own soul and you’re feeling a bit judged right now. You’re just lucky that it’s shining just brightly enough that no one but you can see the cracks.  
  
“Th-that can’t be healthy,” Alphys says. “For your soul to be so loose tethered that it would do that…”  
  
Frisk is looking at you like they just realized something.  
  
“I AM SURE THAT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG!” Papyrus says. “AND EVEN IF THERE WERE, IT WILL BE EASILY FIXED WITH SOME GOOD HEALING PASTA.” Never change, Papyrus.  
  
“That’s right!” shouts Undyne, perking up. “PAPYRUS! Alphys! To the kitchen!”  
  
“But I… already made dinner,” Toriel says, slightly too late. They’re gone. “Oh dear.”  
  
“we’d better go make sure they don’t get too fired up,” Sans says. Frisk has a fire extinguisher for some reason. You hope it’s just for the pun. You hope.  
  
“HEY ALPHYS! I found some of your nerd pasta in here! Let’s throw that in, too!”  
  
“U-undyne, I don’t think ramen goes with spaghetti sauce-“  
  
“Who cares! It’ll be great! Now pass me that blowtorch! We’re gonna make this spaghetti so healthy it does YOGA!”  
  
Um. Should somebody maybe be stopping them?  
  
“Mal? May I speak with you for a moment?” You freeze, looking back at Toriel. She smiles and you try to ignore the crawling feeling on the back of your neck.  
  
“Ah. Alright.” 

“Truthfully, I had meant to talk with you sooner,” she says, leading you back to the living room and taking up residence in one of the oversized armchairs. You perch awkwardly on the couch, still cupping your soul in your hands, careful not to touch it or close your hands around it. Toriel doesn’t seem to mind you hiding it from her, if anything, she seems more comfortable with it out of sight. “But, well, there’s been so much to do. Since the breaking of the barrier, we have had far more of a warm welcome than we could ever expected. I had feared- but no. Perhaps being forgotten was for the best.” You sit, frozen.  
  
“But, in all the celebration, other things have been forgotten, too. Things that we would like to leave buried, but should not.”  
  
She looks at you for a moment, then says gently, “Mal, will you tell me why you climbed that mountain?”  
  
“I-“ you stop. Your throat appears to be clogged.  
  
“Oh dear!” Toriel almost leaps for the kleenex box, and you’re suddenly struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. The Queen of all Monsters comforting you, of all things. A giant goat monster with a tiny box of kleenexes in her claws and a concerned expression. A totally unnecessary thing, because your eyes are dry, anyway.  
  
Toriel eases onto the couch next to you, slowly. There are shouts from the kitchen, which she ignores. “Everyone wants to hold the weight of everything by themselves. Sans thinks that if he pretends that all is fine, it will keep the people around him in happy ignorance. And Asgore… he tries not to think about painful things until he is directly confronted with them.” Her mouth twists bitterly for a moment, then she continues, “But none of you have to bear this alone. You all are surrounded by people you can confide in. Have faith in them.”  
  
You don’t want them to hate you, you realize suddenly. When did that happen? The only reason they like you is because they don’t know the truth. Can you blame them? Even now, your very existence is like the sword of Damocles hanging over all their heads. You still hate them, even when you pretend not to, and you have the hubris to want such a thing. You don’t deserve to- Tories’s breath catches, and you look up, confused. Then down. Ah, your hand slipped. Your soul is still shining in your hand, but it has dulled enough that you can both see the thin bright cracks all along its surface.  
  
Toriel can’t know what caused them. But for a moment her face looks just like the dead man’s did when you showed it to him in the fifth loop. She reaches out to you with one enormous white paw and you flinch back, hard. Your heart returns to your body as you do, a few moments too late. Her hand falls back into her lap.  
  
You want to tell her that it’s not her, it’s not, it’s just that she looks so much like Asgore- but maybe it’s just that she’s a monster after all. 

A thick cloud of smoke heralds Undyne’s approach. Oh thank heavens a distraction.  
  
“Hey, uh, Toriel! This weird round thing kept beeping at us so I crushed it! Is that okay?”  
  
“That would be the fire alarm, Undyne,” Toriel says, standing up.  
  
“Right, yeah. So, uh, it looks like you don’t need the healing spaghetti anymore, right? Because I kinda got bits of the beeping thing in the sauce, and Alphys said something about battery acid being bad for you, which sucks, because it sounds badass! Like lemons who punch stuff!” Her smile is straining a little at the edges from the tension in the room, but she seems determined to plow through. Undyne, how are you a real person?  
  
“I will be right there. In the mean time, I would appreciate it if you refrained from crushing anything in my house.”  
  
“On it!” She disappears back around the corner as you contemplate your chances of successfully hiding in the bathroom for the remainder of the dinner party. It’s not as if monsters are terribly clear on what goes on in there. Or maybe if you climb out a window…  
  
“If you ever decide that you need to confide in someone,” Toriel says quietly, “I would be happy to listen.”  
  
“Why?” You can’t quite bring yourself to look at her.  
  
“It is a terrible thing to see someone as young as you be so desperately unhappy. If I can do anything to help, how could I not?” She seems almost surprised at the question.  
  
Ah- huh. You don’t have anything to say to that.  
  
“And besides,” she says, passing you on her way to the kitchen. “I know a judge when I see one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter. This freaking chapter. It kicked my ass. It's still rough and I'm posting it at two in the morning before I can talk myself into editing it and taking even longer to finish it. 
> 
> Toriel: "Mal, get a friggin therapist before you implode."
> 
> Also Undyne is my favorite character, can you tell. (Sans is a very close second, but I have a bit too much in common with him)


	11. In Which There Is A Fight

Dinner is…somewhat awkward. You hide behind an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes and avoid saying anything beyond ‘please pass the salt’. The food continues to disappear in your mouth. It’s really freaking weird.  
  
The queen of monsters is holding court at the end of the table, mostly describing the progress of the new school she’s planning. Apparently they’ve started receiving job applications.  
  
“They’re all… endearingly enthusiastic. Even the two that appear to be disguised government agents.” She pauses. “Especially those two, actually.” Frisk signs something that you can’t quite see from this angle, and she laughs. Sans is scandalizing Papyrus with bad jokes. It’s all very comfortable and domestic and you want to crawl out of your own skin.  
  
“Hey jerk! Do you want to spar sometime?” On second thought, go back to the awkward quiet. Whyyyy is she sitting across from you?  
  
“Undyne!” Alphys shoots a nervous look at Toriel.  
  
“Yeah, I’d probably accidentally knock you out or something in the first couple minutes, anyway.” Your eye twitches just a little bit. Undyne grins at you, which with her dentistry is pretty impressive looking.  
  
“M-Mal? Could I have the potatoes?” the small yellow dinosaur to Undyne’s left asks, in a last attempt to diffuse hostilities.  
  
“NOW UNDYNE, THAT’S PROBABLY NOT TRUE!” Dammit Papyrus not now. “I’M SURE THAT MAL IS EXCELLENT AT RUNNING AWAY!” Stop helping, Papyrus.  
  
What happens next, is not technically your fault. Which is to say, it totally _is,_ but you have plausible deniability.  
  
You pick up the bowl of mashed potatoes to hand to Alphys, lifting it just as Papyrus demonstrates his affection with a hearty backslap. The bowl flies from your hands with only slightly more force than it should have, flying in a perfect arc directly into Undyne’s face. You even add a little “Oh no!” in there.  
  
There is a sudden and ridged silence. The bowl slowly slips off her face and clatters to the table.  
  
“'Lphys? Babe?” Undine’s voice is slightly muffled under her mask of mashed potatoes. “Pass me th’ spaghetti.”  
  
You duck under the table, and Papyrus gets hit with the ramen-noodles-and-battery-acid concoction from before. Papyrus handles it predictably.  
  
You risk a glance at the head of the table as food begins to fly. Toriel is never going to invite you back here (exactly as planned). Toriel is… laughing her head off? And she dumps her ice water down Sans’s back when he looks away. You treasure his look of utter betrayal.  
  
Alphys has started taking pictures. Papyrus is giving a speech about his prowess in the noble art of spaghetti warfare. And then someone (you suspect Sans) beans you with a carrot and it is _on._  
  
By unspoken agreement, nobody touches the butterscotch pie. The snail pie is not so lucky. Pity, you’d been looking forward to trying that, if only so you could say you had. Or does magic snails not count? Well, they’re in your hair now, so the point is moot.  
  
The fight only dies down when there is no non-butterscotch food to throw. Toriel vetoes furniture throwing with Undyne attempts to suplex the table. You rise from your improvised chair barricade, and realize that your face is smiling. When did that happen? Your hair is full of snails and you’re smiling.  
  
“Well. This is certainly a mess,” Toriel says, as if she wasn’t the one who threw a pie that she’d made at your head. Papyrus declares victory. Alphys declares the intense need for a shower, and it’s agreed that dessert can wait for another time. Frisk, who of all people has come out of it totally clean, informs Toriel that this is exactly why humans eat dessert first.

Undyne stops you at the door. She’s actually the worst off in terms of food spatter, as she kept heroically diving in front of Alpys.  
“So I wasn’t totally joking about that sparring thing. You’re all tense, you know? When I get like that I gotta punch something!” She demonstrates, breaking a lamp.  
  
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” you say carefully. Your newfound energy seems to have drained away.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, monster-human relations, I got the speech from Asgore already. Twice. It suuuuuucks. But nah. see, I’ve got this ghost friend. Lives in a dummy, lots of unresolved issues. And he can’t get hurt, even if you knock the literal stuffing out of him.” She hands you a business card with the address of a nearby gym and a phone number. There’s a little drawing of an angry face on it.  
  
“Um.”  
  
“Anyway, he’s angry all the time, and you’re twitchy all the time, and you both need to fight something.” You do not. But you pocket the card anyway. No sense being rude.  
  
Toriel walks around the corner, accompanied by Papyrus and Sans. Judging by the nigh-volcanic expression on Papyrus’s face, you just missed some truly terrible puns.  
  
“Have a nice- Undyne is that my lamp?”  
  
“Uhhh… gotta go see ya jerk bye Queen Toriel!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you miss me? =)  
> ...Okay yeah that was way too long between updates, so have an entirely unplanned food fight. Unplanned by me, anyway. Mal knew what she was doing.


	12. In Which A Decision Is Made

_The second timeline, you climbed the mountain for the first time. You didn’t know what you’d find. You just had a vague idea that the monsters had come from here, and you thought- who knows what you thought. That you could stop them, perhaps. Certainly, that you could learn more. After all, what other reason could there be for your resurrection? You’d seen Groundhog Day. Maybe if you did the exact right thing at the exact right time, you could prevent all this!_  
Hah.  
You really were such a fool. 

…  
You can’t sleep. Toriel’s words rattle around in your head, taking new forms. You have been trying to forget. To stay sane, to be happy.  
You’re not being fair to them. You know you’re disguising your behavior with humor, but you can’t seem to stop. Why do you feel like this? It’s over and done. Your window is open, and a quiet breeze fills your room with the smell of dust and wet earth.  
The other timelines happened, even if you are the only witness. You still wake up in the night with the feeling of your soul being crushed like glass in your own bleeding hands. 

__

The King of Monsters looks so old and broken, not warlike or cruel at all. And in that moment you really believe that you can convince him. You don’t understand yet that regret has a momentum all of its own.

__

Dammit, stop thinking about it. It doesn’t matter now. It only ever happened once, you made sure of it. Stop thinking about _how strange it feels to be a soul in someone else’s body is strange._ Stop it. _First there’s the disorientation- did I die? I died? Why am I still here?_  
_Then there’s the attempt at seizing control, which inevitably fails._ STOP.  
_Then (grudgingly) communication, which fails because souls have difficulty focussing enough to form words and also the monster is ignoring you._  
Stop thinking about it.  
_And then the monster, in its new, strong body fueled by a human soul, reaches your hometown and and_ and 

And you’re going to think of literally anything else now. Your hair is still damp from the shower and you comb your fingers through it to keep your hands busy, your body curling inward in remembered misery. Before, you’d never had the energy to think of it. Why bother, if it’s all going to be erased? You’d never had time to think of it. 

You can’t afford to now. Not when it could ruin everything. No, you’ve got to bury it deep enough that it won’t poison this new future. Almost unbidden, a story comes to mind, one your grandmother told you when you were very young.

It’s almost a fairy tale, the way you remember it. When she was a child in the old country, there was a time of sickness and hunger. Many, many people died, so many that there weren’t enough graves or people to dig them. She lost uncles, aunts, cousins, and a baby brother. When at last it passed, the people of her town looked at the mass graves and despaired. How could their loved ones be remembered if they rested in such a place? 

Your great-grandparents wanted to give their son and relatives a proper burial. But, of course, they were far too decayed to be identified if they were unearthed. So instead, your grandmother’s father fashioned nine little wooden coffins, no bigger than the size of his hand. And in each one he put a little doll, carved with the name of a dead family member. 

Your aunt did something similar, after her miscarriage. She said it was the family tradition, when there was no body to mourn.  
You roll over again, taking your pillow with you. Can you mourn yourself? Yourselves? All the you’s that died before this now, trying and failing to save the world. 

Your aunt’s hunting knife is on the desk, and you’ve got a couple blocks of pinewood around here somewhere, from the time you tried to whittle a set of dinosaur toys for a baby cousin (it failed spectacularly, you needed three stitches, and you ended up buying her a set from Walmart. But it’s the thought that counts). But coffins are probably easier than a T-Rex, right? And you’re not sleeping, anyway. Even now, you feel restless.  
Against your will, you glance at the card Undyne gave you. What kind of name is Mad Dummy, anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mal's doing great, why do you ask?


	13. In which there is, technically, a Sans fight

This is stupid. This is so, so stupid. You’re only here because you promised Papyrus that you would try it out. Even though you know it’s a bad idea.  
You really have got to stop making promises. 

Maybe you could not and say you did?

No, Papyrus would know. Somehow.  
…Or maybe he wouldn’t and he’d be happy at you for trying, and that would be _worse._

In the grand tradition of blatantly obvious monster naming schemes, Mad Dummy is a literal cloth training dummy, apparently. Or at least, you think that’s what it is. You’ve never really seen anything like it before. Currently, it’s yelling at a group of tiny versions of itself. You take the opportunity to look around. The gym looks a lot emptier than you were expecting. If it weren’t for the weightlifting equipment you passed on your way in, you’d think this was a martial arts studio rather than a gym. Mats on the walls, more rolled up in the corners, rubber flooring. Notably, there’s a lack of things to hit. 

“And THAT’s why you always aim for center of mass, got it?” The… tiny dummies? or is it more accurate to call them dolls at that size? nod attentively. “Now get out of here and look busy, there’s a customer!”  
  
“Hi, uh, Undyne sent me? I-“  
  
“Right, right, you’re the human jerk! She told me all about you.” Really, Undyne? “Whaddya want?”  
  
“Uh, is there a punching bag around, or…”  
  
“You’re looking at them!” What. No.  
  
“I mean, an actual…” It’s serious. Monsters are so weird. “I’m not gonna punch you.”  
  
“Ohhh. I see how it is. You’re too good to use a monster training dummy!”  
  
“No, I-”  
  
“You’re too sensitive about your wimpy human punches to take constructive criticism from a punching bag!”  
  
“…Yes that’s exactly it, excuse me-“  
  
“Maybe you thought you were going to get to pick on some innocent monsters, but instead you got ME!” You do not deal well with shouty people. Papyrus aside. Maybe if you punch it, it will stop yelling at you? You ball up your fist and gently tap the dummy with it.  
  
“There.”  
  
“ARE YOU MOCKING ME?!” the dummy screams, nearly incandescent with rage. Not as planned not as planned! Oh look, there’s your soul out again.  
  
“Please calm down!” You always say the worst possible thing. It’s really just not fair.  
  
“I AM PERFECTLY CALM! YOU LOT, STAY OUT OF THIS!” The smaller dummies look at each other worriedly, before backing away. Okay, so what kind of magic does this monster d-KNIFE!  
  
Magic, you note as it flies by your ear. But kind of a weak opening attack for a fight.  
  
“I HAVE MORE OF THOSE NOW!” The dummy shrieks, as more knives fan out around it. Well, great. This is happening. Is it… posing? “AFTER ALL, IT WAS I-“ You punch it in the face.  
  
Nothing happens. Thank heavens.  
  
“I’M A GHOST THAT LIVES IN A DUMMY!” Yeah, you heard from Undyne. It still feels weird. “UNLESS YOU HAVE MAGIC PUNCHES, YOUR ATTEMPTS ARE USELESS, USELESS, USELESS!”  
  
You do not have magic punches. Or magic kicks. Or magic elbows to the face. You try all these things, however. The dummy mostly throws cotton and knives at you. You dodge the knives easily (its aim is rubbish), but the magic not-cotton is raising some impressive bruises.  
  
Well, only one thing to do. 

You tackle it to the ground and pull its head off.  
  
“FOUL!” The head shouts at you, as the enormous teeth that line its body snap at your kneecap. You tuck the head under your arm and hang on grimly, wrestling the two halves of it’s torso-mouth apart. There’s nothing visibly connecting them, but it feels like two ends of a magnet. The smaller dummies have stopped bothering to pretend that they aren’t watching. 

…You can’t help but feel that there’s probably a better way to do this.

You end up sitting on the bottom piece (which periodically tries to right itself) while holding onto the middle with both arms and periodically kicking the head away whenever it tries to roll closer. Somehow, this doesn’t mean the fight is over- or at least, your soul is enjoying the fresh air too much to GO BACK IN ALREADY.

And so you find yourself at an impasse. You can’t dodge, but the dummy can’t shoot at you without hitting themselves (assuming it can even do magic while in three pieces), but you can’t let go, either.  
  
No one is happy with this.  
  
“Put my soul back already!” you say, trying to get your breathing under control.  
  
“UNHAND ME!”  
  
“The last time I tried, you bit me!”  
  
“AND I’LL DO IT AGAIN, YOU CHEATING HUMAN JERK!”  
  
“I guess I’ll just have to sit on you forever then!” This is surprisingly nostalgic. Though to be fair, you and your siblings never actually tried to murder each other.  
  
“GET OFF ME SO I CAN KILL YOU!”  
  
“Well now that’s definitely not going to happen,” you say as you text Papyrus. The dummy head attacks at just the wrong moment and you end up sending a line of gibberish instead.  
  
“GET OFF ME SO Iiiiiii won’t kill you?”  
  
“I don’t believe you.”  
  
“AAAAAAAAARGH!” Your phone buzzes. “ARE YOU TEXTING DURING OUR BATTLE?”  
  
“Uh-huh,” you say, checking your texts. 

  
*heya  
*papyrus is asking about your cool new way of texting. what’s up?  
  
Oh, come on. Not Sans. You're going to have to deal with dummy puns for the rest of your life if he finds out. With a feeling of impending doom, you text back.  
  
[I’m never taking Undyne’s advice agakgjrjbheag]  
  
*i don’t know what happened but i bet it’s hilarious so i’m gonna come point and laugh  
  
  
Dammit. Maybe you can wrap this up before he finds you and avoid embarrassment, you think just as the door opens. Right, your life doesn’t work that way.  
Sans can manage an impressively blank face, for someone with a permanent smile.  
  
“I’ve lost control of my life,” you say, equally blank faced. As if you were ever in control in the first place.  
  
“is, uh. is the dummy okay?”  
  
“I’LL STUFF YOU AND MOUNT YOUR HEAD ON MY WALL!”  
  
“They’re fine.” Despite your best efforts.  
  
“NO I AM NOT!”  
  
“If you don’t like it, put my soul back already.”  
  
“I TRIED!! YOUR SOUL IS CLEARLY DEFECTIVE!”  
  
“hey now,” Sans interjects.  
  
“JUST LOOK AT IT, IT’S FULL OF CRA-kgfmff!” You give its head a good kick in Sans’s direction. “RUDE!”  
  
“you know, when they were giving us all those talks about monster-human conflict, i wasn’t expecting this.”  
  
“DON’T BELIEVE ANYTHING THE HUMAN SAYS, THEY LIE!”  
  
“I wouldn’t punch them so they threw a knife at me,” you say.  
  
“THAT IS ENTIRELY ACCURATE.”  
  
“heh. wow.” You hear the sound of a shutter clicking repeatedly.  
  
“Sans, don’t take pictures, help.”  
  
“that’s not gonna happen. these are going online.” Oh no he doesn’t.  
  
“HOW DARE-“ The dummy starts to shout, but you bring it up to eye level and hastily whisper to it.  
  
“Mr. Dummy. I know we’re enemies. But if you’re willing to set aside that for a moment, we can work together to steal his phone before he posts those pictures. Truce?” The dummy grinds his teeth as best he can.  
  
“…Fine.” You both turn your eyes towards Sans, who notices all too late the sudden attention.  
  
“hey what?”  
  
“Now!” You drop the dummy and sprint forward. Just as you get within arm’s reach, Sans disappears- no, teleports to the side. Since when can he do that??  
  
“heh, did you really think-“ Sans starts to say, and then promptly trips over the dummy’s head. There’s a moment of almost slow-motion as you watch the utter shock in his eyes, and his phone goes flying. You catch it one-handed and toss it back to the rest of the dummy, who breaks it.  
  
“Really? You could have just deleted the pictures.”  
  
“I DON’T HAVE FINGERS!” Oh, right.  
  
You squat down next to Sans. “You okay?” Papyrus said he’s fragile, but monsters are notoriously tough against accidental or environmental damage.  
  
“my pride is mortally wounded,” he says from the floor. “dust leave me here."  
  
Well, if he’s punning he’s probably fine, you conclude. The dummy makes an inarticulately angry noise.  
  
“Were you standing outside and texting me this whole time?”  
  
“nah, i just took a shortcut.” His one visible eye rolls your way. “your soul’s gone back, by the way.” So it has. Good.  
  
“You gonna get up any time soon?”  
  
“nah. ’s com-floor-table down here.” On second thought you might leave him here.  
  
“GET HIM OUT OF MY GYM.” Right, better leave before the dummy remembers he’s mad at you. You opt for the path of least resistance and just pick up Sans, who seems content to hang limp. He’s surprisingly light, but then, he is just bones.  
  
…That almost turned into a pun, you’re going to have to watch yourself.  
You escape out the door without incident, Sans under one arm.  
  
“Sorry about your phone.”  
  
“eh, i have spares. let’s _call_ it good.”  
  
“You did take pictures of me instead of helping, so I’d say we _break_ even,” you say, and promptly cringe at yourself. Sans snickers at your disgusted face. “Still, we should probably get home before your brother worries.”  
  
“hey, uh. you’re going to want to get some food before we head back,” Sans says, apropos of nothing, tugging you in the direction of an ice cream or popsicle stand. There’s a blue rabbit monster chattering cheerfully with passerby. He seems to be doing good business.  
  
“I’m good, thanks.” Actually, you feel incredibly relaxed at the moment. Probably going to be a mass of bruises and soreness for the next week, but for now you feel great.  
  
“no, i mean, for your injuries.”  
  
“Run that… by me again?”  
  
“monster food can heal injuries. you didn’t know? that’s why pap was making you healing spaghetti.”  
  
“I just thought that was Papyrus being Papyrus.” No wonder monsters are so violent. If food can heal all your injuries, there’s not much reason to hold back.  
  
“that too.” Sans slides to the ground and ambles over to the popsicle stand, just as your phone rings.  
  
“HEY JERK!” Loud. “I heard you went to the gym!”  
  
“Hi Undyne.” How did she get this number?  
  
“I heard you got in a fight!” News travels fast. “How do you like Mad Dummy?”  
  
“I’m pretty sure they hate me.”  
  
“Are you kidding? Mads called me up because they want a rematch!”  
  
“A… rematch?”  
  
“Yeah! You’re the first human that didn’t run away!” You hadn’t considered that as an option. Perhaps that says something bad about you. “Not to mention, it sounds like you won!”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
Undyne sighs into the phone. “Look. Do you feel better now?”  
  
“…Yeah.” And isn’t that the strangest part of this? You should be a bundle of twitching nerves and spiking LV, but instead you feel… almost normal. Come to think of it, you never really lost yourself during the fight. Maybe because you knew you couldn’t hurt them?  
  
“Then what’s the problem?”  
  
You pause. “I’ll… consider it.”


	14. In Which The Great Papyrus Gets To Narrate

The Great Papyrus has some concerns. They are, he is sure, very minor concerns that will be resolved shortly. But he can’t help but notice that some of his friends seem… troubled. 

Not!! That he isn’t sure they can’t handle it!!

But he really wishes they’d be more willing to confide in him. The Great Papyrus is always happy to lend a listening ear! Metaphorically, of course. Skeletons do not have ears.

But Undyne is being irritable all the time, and he doesn’t think she even knows why. It grows with every object she breaks on accident, every new Surface rule she learns, every human that stares at her for too long. She’s happy, of course, but also lost. 

And Frisk the Human! They are tired all the time, even though they pretend not to be. Of course, being the Ambassador for all of Monsterkind is Very Strenuous! But The Great Papyrus is starting to worry that they are not taking enough time to themselves.

Mal the Tall Human almost seems to be having a harder time adjusting to the Surface World than the Monsters. Which is impossible! Because she lives up here! But the light is always on in her room at all hours of the night and Papyrus is pretty sure she's been missing work despite clearly not being the slacking type, SANS. 

And Sans. Sans is Sans, of course. Papyrus could never ask him to be anything else. And he really does seem happier than he was. Papyrus hopes that’s enough. Maybe, if nothing bad happens, it will last. 

Honestly! This is supposed to be a story with a happy ending! Some people are just so difficult. Fortunately, they all have in common one thing- The Great Papyrus! And with him on the case, no one can be sad for long! 

Of course, the first step in Papyrus’s Brilliant Strategy To Make Everyone Happy Forever is research! Fortunately, he knows everything worth knowing about his brother, so he’s already a quarter of the way there! And Frisk and Undyne live elsewhere, so they will require a different approach. Which is why he is snooping through his friend Mal’s room. 

…No, it’s not snooping, it’s research! To make her happy! He’s sure she would understand.

Just in case, though, he waited for her to leave the apartment first. 

  
Mal needs to clean her room! It’s a mess in here! Humans appear to be just as allergic to making beds and hanging up their clothes as certain brothers are. Her closet is full of perfectly serviceable hangers that are unoccupied. Honestly. Papyrus’s gloves itch to neaten things up a bit, but he reminds himself sternly of the task at hand. He must leave no trace of his presence! 

There is a skiing pole in the very back of her closet. Papyrus excitedly makes a note. Frisk has told him that the Surface snows like Snowden sometimes, maybe they could all go skiing and skating the next time it does! This is perfect for Phase Three of his brilliant strategy: Make Everybody Be Friends With Each Other! And to think Mal never mentioned she liked to ski! Or maybe not, it looks a bit dusty and is missing its twin. Papyrus gasps. Maybe Mal is so bad at skiing that she lost the other pole and is hiding the symbol of her shame!

Oh no! He can’t even ask Mal! She’ll know he was snooping!  
Maybe if he asks with utmost subtlety. The Great Papyrus is, after all, a master of subtlety! 

Papyrus turns his attention to the desk that’s shoved up against the wall. He’s often seen the light from its lamp filtering under the door at all hours of the night. Currently, it is lined with bottles of wood glue, varnish, and sandpaper. There is a large pile of shavings and splintered wood in the trash can nearby. Mal appears to have taken up nocturnal woodcarving!

But what could she be making? Presents? Sawdust? A life-size sculpture of his face? Research is so exciting! He feels just like Metta007 in _From Mettaton With Love_ (Starring Mettaton)! With a glance over his shoulder to build dramatic tension (he knows she won’t be back for at least an hour), Papyrus opens the desk drawer. 

The first thing he notices are all the old-fashioned clothespins are rattling around loose. Several of them appear to be painted to look like humans, and are wrapped in fabric. Mal seems to be having trouble getting them to look right. Papyrus rubs his gloves together happily. Action figures! Mal is trying to make action figures!

There’s a layered pile of thin wooden sheets with numbered outlines drawn on them, clearly not yet started. And in the very back, three bundles wrapped in handkerchiefs. Papyrus unwraps them carefully. 

The bundles are shallow wooden boxes, narrower at the bottom than the top. The third one is obviously unfinished, and the first one is noticeably more haphazard than the other two. They have numbers on their covers. The first one has a little doll in it. 

The boxes look almost like- no, exactly like the coffins that are sometimes used to transport dust so that it can be sprinkled on the dead monster’s favorite things. Do humans have something similar? No, wait, Mal said that humans don’t turn to dust.  
Papyrus thinks for a moment, before pulling out his phone and looking it up. 

…  
Well. That was Very Informative. Aren’t cultural similarities interesting. Papyrus closes his phone, a little queasy. 

Human coffins are supposed to be large enough to fit inside, though. Mal’s are very small. Papyrus itches the back of his neck bones worriedly and wonders if he is prying a bit too much. He’s starting to think Mal might not want him to see this. 

This is starting to look like one of those things that he should talk to Sans or Undyne about. Simultaneously, it is starting to look like one of those things he shouldn’t. 

His phone dings cheerfully, nearly making him jump out of his own bones. Mal has sent him a text and oh no SHE KNOWS! Quickly, Papyrus removes the evidence by throwing his phone in the trash. If he doesn't open the text, maybe it won't count! No, that's ridiculous. He is far too sneaky for Mal to have guessed his intentions, and humans can't read minds! No matter what Undyne says! With considerable trepidation, Papyrus retrieves his cell. Hmm. HMMMM. AHA- nope, he gives up. What in the underground is “Papyrughkjldfehgjgkdjgb’ supposed to mean? 

…Is it a cool human thing? It must be! And Papyrus must respond in kind! He starts to carefully type a line of gibberish of his own, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t replicate the effortless incomprehensibility that Mal has just demonstrated! 

This requires an expert in ridiculousness. Fortunately, Sans is extremely talented in that field. Unfortunately, he’s at one of his dozen jobs. Probably slacking off! Which means Papyrus doesn’t have to feel bad about texting him at work! 

Papyrus carefully rewraps and replaces the tiny coffins, thinking.  
Mal would be happier if she had more friends. Obviously she acknowledges the greatness of the great Papyrus, but maybe she just needs to spend more time around them all!  
  
But maybe not Undyne for a little while. He’s not sure the furniture can take it. Which, by process of elimination, leaves…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Papyrus. Bless.  
> Originally this chapter and the last one were supposed to be switched, but this one was being difficult and the other one flowed better. At least we know the real reason Sans showed up, now.
> 
> Also, the sheer number of times I've had my boss text me and reacted like Papyrus is embarrassing.


	15. In Which There Is (n)Ice Cream

In all the possible ways you thought this day would end, you hadn’t accounted for ice cream.  
Sorry, Nice Cream. You’re not sure what the difference is. You’d ask, but you’re certain you would only get a pun in response. 

“sorry about the whole mad dummy thing. if i’d known where you were going, i’d have warned you,” Sans says. 

“Eh, it worked out,” you say, wadding the wrapper into a ball. The flavor of the ice cream isn’t one you recognize. A little like raspberries, a little like electricity. 

“check your wrapper.”

“Huh?” You uncrumple the nice cream wrapper. Is it like a fortune cookie? Please, just let it not be more puns. _’Love yourself, I love you!’_ “Oh. Huh.” Sans shifts his weight. He's not much better at keeping up a conversation than you are, huh? 

“i know papyrus has been giving you updates, but the artist’s subject gig you suggested has been going pretty good. i’m a _model_ employee.” Free ice cream is not worth this. “got some weird questions _posed_ to me the first day, but…“ His voice turns thoughtful. “humans have been surprisingly chill. all that worry that we’d scare the humans or they’d hate us, and nobody seems to mind.” Ha. Ha. Oh hell you’re drowning in the irony. You toss your nice cream wrapper into the trash can, biting down on your tongue until electric raspberry is replaced with with the taste of metal. 

“Well, you’re not exactly scary-looking, are you?” you hear yourself say. “Four-foot-tall skeletons don't quite inspire fear in most people.” In comparison to, say, nine-foot-tall goat-lion monsters. Maybe if someone was cruel to Papyrus? Big-sibling rage is universal. 

“that so?” Sans says. You’re not good at reading his face, but he looks like he can’t decide whether to be flattered or insulted. He’s eating a lot slower than you. Maybe skeletons get ice-cream headaches as well? 

There’s a pause where normal conversation would go. You missed a cue, didn’t you? Giving up proper conversation as a lost cause, you cast your eyes out over the park. There’s a slightly disheveled man in a suit talking to the rabbit at the stand. He seems very excitable. 

“…frisk is scared of me,” Sans says, out of nowhere.

“Why?” 

“well, uh. when they first showed up, the first human in the underground in years, i was worried about what they’d do.” Huh. So dancing around a topic is inheritable. His probably-dad does that too. The dead man never told you outright what went on in the regular loops. It’s not your business, after all. But you’re not an idiot, and you’re not about to fault a kid for self defense. 

“So you picked a fight?” It’s hard to picture. No, maybe you just don’t want to picture it. But he is a monster…

“what? no. i just threatened them. a little. a lot.” The lights in his eye sockets faded out. “they aren’t afraid of undyne.” He immediately seems to regret saying that. As if you don’t know what monsters are capable of. Still it’s something of a relief. Papyrus has regaled you with the story of how he captured the human, but you weren’t sure how Sans fit in. “heh. maybe i'm just scary-looking after all.”

And there it is, the thing that’s been bugging you. The thing he’s not saying. “But that’s not what you’re worried about, is it?” you say. Sans gives you a hard look. You stare evenly back until he looks away. 

“i can’t believe you actually enjoyed fighting that dummy,” he says, transparently changing the subject. 

“I can’t believe you threatened a ten year old,” you say, grinning at him. “For shaaaame.” Sans makes a miserable noise and looks down at his wrapper. It’s an illustration of a hug.  
...You’re considering giving him one. You hadn’t meant for that to hit as hard as it apparently did. You just really didn't want to talk about fighting the dummy. 

The worryingly happy man pushes a stack of bills into the rabbit-monster’s paws. A cheer goes up. Did he just pay for everyone’s ice cream? Bad timing on your part, then. 

Ah. you think he caught you staring. He’s waving. He’s coming this way. Quick, Sans, scatter! He can only catch one of us! Sans ignores to your furtive attempts to signal him. He probably knows you’d outrun him by default. 

“It’s a beautiful day!” Up close, you can tell that he hasn’t slept or shaved in days. You shift slightly in front of Sans. 

“sure is,” Sans says warily. 

“Birds, flowers, monsters, humans- to think that we’d be alive to see it! It’s a miracle!” Why is he still talking to you. 

“Are you okay?” He seems… happy? No, ecstatic. You immediately default to your standard method of dealing with obviously unhinged people. Nodding and neutral statements haven’t failed you once in the hell that is customer service!

“I’ve been hiding in my basement for the past week!” Okay. “And I come out and I see this!” Uh-huh. “It’s a miracle!”

“And it’s got to all be because of you monsters!” He beams benevolently at Sans. “Thank you!”

“uh. don’t mention it.” Sans is sweating nervously. You’re still not sure how that works. 

“Why is it a miracle?” You ask, against your better judgement. Sans elbows you. 

“Don’t you see? The world didn’t end this time!”  
  
Sans drops his nice cream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha oops
> 
> I did mention that natural Human Determination interacts weirdly with the resets and timelines...


	16. Chapter 16

Sans

  


“It’s been ending and restarting and ending over and over again!”

no. 

“No matter what I did, everything died. But nobody remembered!”

He’d thought that maybe it was finally done. That he could leave his fears behind him in the Underground. 

“But this time, you all showed up instead! So you must have done something to stop it!”

But it’s been right there in front of him, hasn’t it? Evidence of time worn thin. The things he hadn’t noticed- no. The things he’d been willfully ignoring. 

The odd blonde woman who had spent fifteen minutes apologizing to Toriel for… something. Even Tori wasn’t sure, and she swore up and down that she’d never even spoken to the lady before. 

The way the lady at the coffee shop had known everyone’s orders without being told. When asked, she’d looked vaguely confused herself. 

The fact that Mettaton’s fanbase bloomed in literal seconds, like they’d just been waiting for him to show his screen. 

“Sans, wait!”

A fair amount of the human population of the city- maybe even the world, all seemed to be suffering from deja vu. 

“Slow down!”

…Mal had been waiting for them up on Mount Ebbott. Did she even know why?

His own not-quite memories are pounding at the sides of his skull. If he reaches for them, thinks too hard about them, they’ll be gone. Fortunately, he’s got plenty of experience not thinking about pink elephants, as it were. 

Timelines, jumping left and right… He needs to get to his lab. 

-

You need to get back to your apartment. Sans has ditched you with his stupid teleporty magic, and you want an explanation. You brush past a nervous Papyrus with an apologetic smile and make a direct path to your room, locking the door behind you. 

“Dead man, we need to talk,” you say. Nothing. Well, fine. He can claim that he has no stakes in this timeline, but you know a bluff when you see it. Your hand tightens on the doorknob of the closet door, the current hiding place for your ski pole. “Gaster, get in here before I cause one of those incidents you’re so worried about.”  
  
The air turns grey as time grinds to a halt. Ha. Monsters.

**“Mal. Threats are unwise.”**

“And yet you’re here, so they work.” 

**“I cannot remain like this for very long without attracting attention.”** He looks more melt-y than usual. Maybe you woke him up from a nap. 

“Consider attention attracted. What’s all this about the world ending?” 

**“You were informed of the possibility.”**

“You didn’t say it actually happened here, in this timeline! Why don’t I remember it?”

**“Your Soul is tied to aberrations in the timeline. Other memories are erased when time is rewound, allowing for a certain continuity of existence. Just as it will be for the human you met, and others who remember. Determination is... a troublesome thing.”**

“So, if the kid resets again, I won’t remember all this?” Making friends, being roommates with Papyrus and Sans, tormenting Undyne, eating Toriel’s pie…

**“No. I’m-”**

“Good.”

**“…Hm. I will never understand you.”** That’s probably for the best. 

“Right, well, we’ve got another problem.” You quickly explain the situation and Sans’s reaction.

**“…Keep Sans out of it. His involvement will only complicate matters.”**

“Sure, fine, but how? After all, he’s your son.” You give him a considering look. It’s difficult to read someone with a melted skull for a face. “Brother?”

**“Do not speculate,”** the dead man says irritably. His amorphous body shudders. **“I cannot remain. Remember your promises.”** It’s not quite right to say that he fades or disappears, rather, he is suddenly not there, and has never been there. You remember the conversation just fine, but it definitely didn’t happen. Headache-inducing. 

You flop down on your bed and try not to think about the implications of forgotten timelines. You wonder what you were doing when the world ended? Climbing the mountain, probably. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Did you have a few minutes warning, or was it so sudden you barely felt it? Was it a relief?  
…You’re thinking about the implications. 

With a sigh, you lever yourself out of bed and return the ski pole to its proper place. You should probably say hi to Papyrus before he works himself into a tizzy. You should definitely check on Sans. Instead you sit down at the desk and start carefully gluing together the third coffin. You can only make them for the deaths you remember, but maybe somewhere, another you is doing the same. 

-

…It all comes back to Determination. No matter how many times he runs the scans, he gets the same result. While he can’t speak for other timelines and other Sanses, there’s definitely been exactly two full resets before this current present.  
And that’s really interesting, because he only has one in his notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Chases off depression with a broom*  
> ...It'll be back.  
> Sorry! This chapter has been 80% done for way too long so I decided screw it and posted. It's mostly to clarify what's going on with the timelines (...a little. Sorta)  
> No promises when the next chapter will be out, I've got the chapter after that written though! (it's another cliffhanger and you're all gonna hate me)


End file.
